Three Little Pigs Retrospective Template: Straw, Sticks, Bricks and the Wolf

The Three Little Pigs retrospective borrows the fairy tale to ask one question: what would fall over if something pushed hard? The team sorts its systems, processes and habits into the house of straw (fragile), the house of sticks (needs shoring up) and the house of bricks (solid), then names the wolf: the threats that could blow the weak houses down. It suits any team that's one sick day away from trouble.

The four columns

Straw vs sticks is where teams hesitate. Ask "would it survive a bad week?" If not, it's straw. If it would survive only with overtime or luck, it's sticks. Fill the wolf column last: threats only mean something once you know what the houses are made of.

Where it comes from. No single person is credited with it. The format borrows the English fairy tale, and versions differ: some use only the three houses, some add the wolf as outside threats (as here), and a few use the wolf column for action items.

When to use it (and when not to)

Use it when:

• a peak is coming: a seasonal spike, a big launch, a migration cutover
• you've just had a near miss and want to find its siblings
• someone who holds a lot of knowledge is leaving or going on leave
• the team inherited a system nobody has mapped

Pick something else when:

• the problem is how people worked together, not what they built. Run Mad Sad Glad or What Went Well instead.
• something already broke. Use the incident review template for the timeline and root causes.
• the question is delivery speed. The pigs care about strength, not pace; Speed Car fits better.

How to run it live (45 minutes)

1. Check last time's repairs. Open the Previous Retro tab in the Action Items panel, and Old / Unresolved Items for anything older. A fix that's still open means that house is still straw.
2. Write the houses first. Set the shared timer for 10 minutes. Name things specifically: "the nightly sync job," not "infrastructure."
3. Then the wolf. Five minutes for threats. Real ones with dates beat guesses.
4. Group and vote. Vote only on straw and sticks: bricks don't need fixing, and wolves aren't yours to fix.
5. Pair each top note with a wolf. Ask "which wolf blows this down, and when?" Straw with no wolf in sight can wait. Straw with a wolf next month can't.
6. Decide, then read the bricks. Read them out loud last: they're the things not to "improve" by accident.

How to run it async over a sprint

Fragile things show up in normal work, so note them the moment you find them.

1. Day 1: the next board is ready as soon as someone clicks Start New Retro after the last retro.
2. During the sprint: whenever someone repeats a manual step, hears "only one person knows that," or gets paged for something odd, they add a straw or sticks note, on the board or in the Team Room's Quick Notes. Turn off Show Name to post without your name shown.
3. Mid-sprint: the facilitator adds wolves from the calendar: launches, freezes, leave, vendor deadlines.
4. Two days before the end: everyone adds one brick (the column people skip) and votes.
5. The day before: the facilitator groups notes and reads the CarrotIQ Sprint Summary for the straw column.
6. Retro day: a 20-minute call on the top straw and sticks, or a written round where each owner replies with a fix and a date.

See how to run an async retrospective for the full playbook.

12 example prompts

House of straw

1. What would break if one specific person were away for two weeks?
2. Which step do we still do by hand, from memory?
3. What are we scared to touch?

House of sticks 4. What works, but only because someone babysits it? 5. Where are our tests or alerts thinner than we'd like? 6. What did we patch this sprint instead of fixing?

House of bricks 7. What did we rely on this sprint without thinking about it? 8. Which past investment paid off when things got busy? 9. What could a new joiner run safely in their first week?

The wolf 10. What's coming next quarter that will test us? 11. Which vendor or other team could hit us without warning? 12. What's the worst week we can realistically imagine?

For more, see 60 sprint retrospective questions.

Facilitator tip and a common pitfall

Tip: make the bricks earn their place. Teams are generous with bricks. For each one, ask "when did this last get tested?" If the answer is "never," it's sticks in a brick costume. Moving one brick to sticks is often the most useful minute of the retro.

Pitfall: the straw column turns into a rewrite wish list. "Rewrite the billing service" won't fit in a sprint and starts an architecture debate. Ask for the smallest change that turns straw into sticks: a runbook, a second person trained, an alert. Big rebuilds go to planning, with the straw note as the reason.

How AI helps with this format

On Pro AI (and during the free trial), CarrotIQ handles the admin:

• Group names. Drag "restore never tested" onto "nobody checks the backup job's logs" and CarrotIQ names the group, for example "Untested Backups".
• Summaries. The Sprint Summary covers each column and the whole retro. The straw summary is a ready-made risk list for next quarter's planning.
• Suggested action items. CarrotIQ Suggest drafts an action from the notes, weighting the most-voted ones. Cut it down to the smallest fix, then assign it.

Example action items

Straw gets a fix or a workaround, sticks get reinforcement, and the wolf sets the deadline.

Next retro, the Previous Retro tab lists these; older open ones sit under Old / Unresolved Items. More in retrospective action items that actually get done.

Use this template in Retro Rabbit

1. Start a 14-day free trial. No card is needed.
2. Pick Three Little Pigs from the format library: choose "Browse all formats" when you create your Team Room, or later in the Team Room's Settings.
3. Before the first retro, add the wolves you already know about (launches, freezes, leave) so everyone sees what the houses must survive.

See pricing for plans.

Related formats

• Pre-mortem: imagine the failure before a launch
• Incident review: when the wolf already came
• Tech debt retrospective: when the straw column is mostly old debt
• Sailboat: risks measured against a goal, not the strength of what you've built
• More formats in Fun and themed
• All retrospective templates